Steven Levy over at Wired recently wrote a short piece comparing Opendoor’s iBuying approach to what Zillow was doing when it was in the space. (Thank you Robert Wright for forwarding me the article.)
As we have talked about before, the fundamental problem with Zillow’s model is that it couldn’t accurately predict where home prices were going. It was losing too much money and so they shut down that side of their business.
The article talks about Opendoor’s approach and how they’ve spent the last 8 years refining a valuation model/approach that is now apparently pretty accurate. That’s positive. But here’s another excerpt that I found particularly interesting:
There’s one controversial aspect of the business model that Wong didn’t bring up. It appears that when companies like Zillow and Opendoor can’t easily sell a home, the fallback is what’s called an “institutional sale.” All iBuyers sell a small but not insignificant percentage to institutional investors with aspirations of being “mega-landlords.” While the marketing materials of the iBuyers emphasize clean sunny rooms and frictionless transactions, that segment of the market involves hedge funds like KKR and Blackstone snapping up properties for rental, limiting the inventory available for families seeking homes. Even the Biden administration has weighed in on the evils of this trend: “Large investor purchases of single-family homes and conversion into rental properties speeds the transition of neighborhoods from homeownership to rental and drives up home prices for lower cost homes, making it harder for aspiring first-time and first-generation home buyers, among others, to buy a home,” said a recent
Steven Levy over at Wired recently wrote a short piece comparing Opendoor’s iBuying approach to what Zillow was doing when it was in the space. (Thank you Robert Wright for forwarding me the article.)
As we have talked about before, the fundamental problem with Zillow’s model is that it couldn’t accurately predict where home prices were going. It was losing too much money and so they shut down that side of their business.
The article talks about Opendoor’s approach and how they’ve spent the last 8 years refining a valuation model/approach that is now apparently pretty accurate. That’s positive. But here’s another excerpt that I found particularly interesting:
There’s one controversial aspect of the business model that Wong didn’t bring up. It appears that when companies like Zillow and Opendoor can’t easily sell a home, the fallback is what’s called an “institutional sale.” All iBuyers sell a small but not insignificant percentage to institutional investors with aspirations of being “mega-landlords.” While the marketing materials of the iBuyers emphasize clean sunny rooms and frictionless transactions, that segment of the market involves hedge funds like KKR and Blackstone snapping up properties for rental, limiting the inventory available for families seeking homes. Even the Biden administration has weighed in on the evils of this trend: “Large investor purchases of single-family homes and conversion into rental properties speeds the transition of neighborhoods from homeownership to rental and drives up home prices for lower cost homes, making it harder for aspiring first-time and first-generation home buyers, among others, to buy a home,” said a recent
First, these highly tuned valuation models are now being used to scale the acquisition of single family homes. No specific figures are given, but Levy speculates that some iBuyers could be feeding up to 20% of their homes to institutional buyers. Economies of scale are a challenge with this asset class. Here technology is helping.
Second, I don’t like the tone toward renters in the above White House dispatch: “[It] speeds the transition of neighborhoods from homeownership to rental.” This line in particular implies that renting is perceived as being suboptimal to homeownership and that “speeding”’ towards the former is something that should be avoided for reasons of social good.
Even the words that are used here suggest biases. A single-family home is called, well, a home. But a rented one is a rental property. I reckon that a home is a home regardless of whether it’s low-rise, high-rise, rented, or owned.
In it are a few interesting figures about the housing market in the US. According to a recent survey that the company did, the average first-time buyer made 10 offers before successfully securing a home last year. The percentage of all-cash offers is also up to 25% from 15% a year ago. What is clear is that demand is currently outstripping supply. Based on these figures, housing supply in the US is at the lowest it has been since the early 1980s.
But of course, the real point of the year in review was to talk about all of the great things that Opendoor has been doing to digitize the real estate industry. Perhaps the most interesting is its focus on creating "all-in-one real estate transactions." What this aims to do is consolidate the now separate processes of selling a home, buying a new home, and obtaining financing, into one digital workflow. Whether or not Opendoor is the one to do it, I believe that this is the future.
And what we have learned from other industries (that have successfully digitized) is that when you make something super easy, people end up doing a lot more of it.
The obvious story is that Zillow's algorithms were not valuing homes correctly. But the story is more nuanced than this. In Q1 of this year, Zillow's home flipping business was actually more profitable than it had initially expected. And that's because its algorithms were consistently undervaluing homes. So when it did transact, it was doing so at favorable / low cost bases.
The problem was that the company was not transacting enough and there was a fear of losing ground to competitors like Opendoor. Apparently only about 10% of people who requested an offer from Zillow actually ended up accepting it. Margins were good, but volumes were too low.
First, these highly tuned valuation models are now being used to scale the acquisition of single family homes. No specific figures are given, but Levy speculates that some iBuyers could be feeding up to 20% of their homes to institutional buyers. Economies of scale are a challenge with this asset class. Here technology is helping.
Second, I don’t like the tone toward renters in the above White House dispatch: “[It] speeds the transition of neighborhoods from homeownership to rental.” This line in particular implies that renting is perceived as being suboptimal to homeownership and that “speeding”’ towards the former is something that should be avoided for reasons of social good.
Even the words that are used here suggest biases. A single-family home is called, well, a home. But a rented one is a rental property. I reckon that a home is a home regardless of whether it’s low-rise, high-rise, rented, or owned.
In it are a few interesting figures about the housing market in the US. According to a recent survey that the company did, the average first-time buyer made 10 offers before successfully securing a home last year. The percentage of all-cash offers is also up to 25% from 15% a year ago. What is clear is that demand is currently outstripping supply. Based on these figures, housing supply in the US is at the lowest it has been since the early 1980s.
But of course, the real point of the year in review was to talk about all of the great things that Opendoor has been doing to digitize the real estate industry. Perhaps the most interesting is its focus on creating "all-in-one real estate transactions." What this aims to do is consolidate the now separate processes of selling a home, buying a new home, and obtaining financing, into one digital workflow. Whether or not Opendoor is the one to do it, I believe that this is the future.
And what we have learned from other industries (that have successfully digitized) is that when you make something super easy, people end up doing a lot more of it.
The obvious story is that Zillow's algorithms were not valuing homes correctly. But the story is more nuanced than this. In Q1 of this year, Zillow's home flipping business was actually more profitable than it had initially expected. And that's because its algorithms were consistently undervaluing homes. So when it did transact, it was doing so at favorable / low cost bases.
The problem was that the company was not transacting enough and there was a fear of losing ground to competitors like Opendoor. Apparently only about 10% of people who requested an offer from Zillow actually ended up accepting it. Margins were good, but volumes were too low.
So what Zillow did was tweak its algorithm to be more aggressive (see above chart from the WSJ). But this created the opposite problem: low/negative margins, higher volumes.
Once again, it shows you some of the challenges with bringing real estate online. The supply of homes is largely heterogenous and there are a lot of qualitative factors that play into what someone is willing to pay.
So what Zillow did was tweak its algorithm to be more aggressive (see above chart from the WSJ). But this created the opposite problem: low/negative margins, higher volumes.
Once again, it shows you some of the challenges with bringing real estate online. The supply of homes is largely heterogenous and there are a lot of qualitative factors that play into what someone is willing to pay.
